


Tiptoe

by Gumnut



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, Sleep, sleeping disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gumnut/pseuds/Gumnut
Summary: Virgil Tracy and sleep.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	Tiptoe

**Author's Note:**

> Fandomversary 2020 Fic Six – Virgil & Tiptoe for @purfectpurple
> 
> -o-o-o-

It started when he was a baby.

Virgil was a sensitive child and long before he learned to control himself and manage his sensory input, his moods were fragile. It wasn’t that his family was terrified of him.

It was more they were terrified of waking him.

Fortunately, despite his sensitivities, Virgil was a good sleeper and once he was asleep, he usually stayed that way.

The challenge was at either end of the soporific voyage - getting to sleep and waking up.

As a child, the first part was fairly easy. There were moments where he nodded off in the car and his father had to carry him in, times where he crashed in front of the TV, falling asleep on the couch. He was an active boy and wore himself out on a regular basis.

Waking up in the morning? Not so easy. Before the miraculous discovery of coffee as an adult - his father forbade it when he was young for very good reasons - getting out of bed in the mornings was a saga.

His youngest brothers ended up absolutely terrified of waking him. Gordon called him beary-scary and Alan just plain didn’t go anywhere near him until he had had breakfast.

But even before his youngest brothers were born, Virgil was difficult. His mother tried everything from whale song to gentle piano music, from alarms to raising her voice.

Nothing worked.

Virgil would either become intolerable and snarly or just not wake up at all.

John used Virgil for his year five science project. He may have risked life and limb by experimenting with the different techniques involved in waking his older brother, and when his father found out, there were some serious words, but one piece of crucial information was discovered.

There was one family member who could wake Virgil without the drama.

His big brother Scott.

John was unable to determine exactly what their eldest did, but every time he was left alone with a sleeping Virgil, they would eventually both emerge from his room, Virgil calm and fully awake.

John interrogated both of them on specifics, but neither were talking. In fact, Virgil reverted to snarly at the mere hint of a question on the subject and John did rather value his life – he needed it to become an astronaut.

So, Scott was wrangled into Virgil waking duty every morning before school and for the first time, the second eldest made it to school on time and without growling at a family member.

Now, Virgil at heart was a gentle child, so all this anger and snarling was odd. There was discussion of taking him to a child psychologist to see if he needed help, but Virgil claimed he just wanted to sleep in.

Scott claimed there was nothing wrong with Virgil…and, in that not so innocent way of a child too smart for his own good, insinuated that there was more likely something wrong with the rest of them than Virgil.

Their father wondered if he should take both of his eldest to a child psychologist.

But Virgil’s sleeping habits became the least of their worries when the family lost their beloved wife and mother.

Jeff disappeared into work and each of his boys just managed the best they could.

Scott and Virgil continued to be close through the remainder of their formative years and waking Virgil in the mornings was only an issue when Scott was absent.

Which occurred rather abruptly when the eldest left for the Air Force.

But by this time Virgil was old enough to guzzle coffee and that quickly became his younger brothers’ go to for grizzly bear management.

Once International Rescue was formed and they all moved to the Island, Scott was reinstated as official Virgil rouser.

The eldest was unable to be around all the time, and to be fair, he wasn’t really needed. Virgil was an adult and could manage himself. Scott just made sure that the Island was always…always… fully stocked with coffee.

But all the coffee in the world could not handle the impact of losing their father.

For awhile there, all five brothers lost it in some way.

Scott became obsessive and driven.

John was the hunter, scouring the skies, space, everything.

Gordon became the achiever. He felt the need to push himself to be the best at everything he did. From the Olympics to WASP to surviving the crippling hydrofoil crash, Gordon did it all to prove himself to the father he had lost. As if he felt he hadn’t done enough while his father had been safe and sound.

Alan was eleven. Alan lost his daddy and they all cried with him.

But Virgil lost something he never quite recovered in the years that followed, even after their father’s return. Virgil lost the ability to sleep.

Sure, he slept some, but every night was disturbed, every night was late, every morning was just hard.

But he was an adult and his family was falling apart around him. International Rescue needed rescuing. His big brother, his idol, his best friend, was falling apart. A little insomnia seemed nothing in comparison.

So, he managed.

But the bear returned.

There was coffee. Buckets of it. He hated snarling at those he loved. It was like he was possessed by an insomniac demon.

And he couldn’t afford to sleep through a rescue alarm. He nailed strategies into his brain, desperate to get it to behave. He took on his insomnia as he did any challenge and kept it quiet not to worry his brothers.

He managed to get through a year of hell. He couldn’t hide all of it and he soon became aware of his family tiptoeing around him. Occasionally he would fall asleep on the lounge or out by the pool.

Gordon nearly got his kahunas handed to him the day he got it into his head that it might be funny to dump a bucket of water on a sleeping Virgil.

The incident was never spoken of again.

Virgil was beary-scary.

But for that first year, he got away with it.

It wore him down. The bear became the norm, not the odd incident. Scott had to corner him and reprimand his gentle brother for snarling at an idiot rescuee.

And then came the day he fell asleep in his chute.

It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was rescue number five and he hadn’t slept for nearly forty-eight hours. The moment he lay down, he found himself relaxing as the machinery did what it needed to do its rhythmic way. Looking back, he realised he must have drifted off shortly before the machinery added his baldric.

It was John who woke him, yelling in his ear from orbit.

Waking up to find himself dangling from a harness hanging above his ‘bird, Brains’ neuroticism with safety the only thing keeping him from a fall that would have killed him.

Virgil managed to climb down into his ‘bird, but John’s words were acidic, the Commander’s even more so, and Scott returned to the Island to kick Virgil off Thunderbird Two and take her without him.

Virgil was ordered to bed.

Where he stared at the ceiling and fretted until his brother returned.

There followed the psychologist and the sleep doctors. Virgil tried his best. He couldn’t let his family down.

Virgil’s sleep became respected even more. If he fell asleep anywhere, the whole family would respect it, tiptoeing if necessary, but usually vacating to other parts of the house to let their big bear sleep.

But now it wasn’t out of fear, but more out of understanding.

Sleep was precious and Virgil needed every morsel he could gather.

Coffee was still deployed every morning. Hell, Scott was deployed some mornings. The eldest still held that secret close to his chest and Virgil refused to speak about it, but if it made Virgil’s life easier, the whole family was just happy their bear of a brother was happy.

His sleep issues improved, but they never quite went away. There were theories as to why Virgil was having trouble, but nothing conclusive. He just kept soldiering on.

And if he fell asleep anywhere…anywhere, he remained that way as long as his family could manage.

-o-o-o-

FIN.


End file.
